Merry Ho Ho Ho
This is the last time I will drive to Los Angeles, at least from Redding. We left Casa Linda at 8:30 Monday morning, and pulled up to Daughter Denise’s house in Corona at 7:15 that evening. Same time zone, no shopping along the way, almost eleven hours of driving. And the last almost-three hours were in Los Angeles County, first flying over some back roads, and then stop-’n-crawling along the highways.
We did this last year, too, but we stopped at Yosemite overnight on the way down. The traffic was awful for longer on the interstate, because it was the first day people were off from work and all of them heading south had decided to drive. I can understand it, just not condone it. And if I ever am dragged down here again, we will fly, either commercially or with yours truly at the yoke. Hopefully, we will depart from another venue, but that’s another rant.
The traffic in the Los Angeles area is notorious, but no one is doing anything about it. The building sprawl continues unabated. Places like Lancaster and Palmdale are a speculators paradise, because it’s thought that a new LAX will be built there. It’s like a squashed cheeseball, long turned rancid; you drive for eons by strip malls offering every piece of trash that poor people can almost but not quite afford. And that’s just the apron to the main disaster, a freeway system that is overloaded with remarkably patient people. Or maybe they’re just numb.
Forty-five years ago, my dear friend Jim Cardwell lived in Los Angeles. One afternoon, he was so fed up with the traffic that he got out of his car, which hadn’t moved in several minutes, clambered up the ice plants by the side of the freeway, and parked himself on a barstool at a local watering hole to contemplate his future. When the CHP found the car and put out a item on the police wire, a newspaper editor recognized Jim’s name. As the car had been abandoned in the second lane, he knew that something was going on and he dispatched a reporter to check the local bars. Cardwell explained that he was finally fed up with Los Angeles, and had decided to move to Carmel. A wise fellow.
So things were that bad almost a half-century ago, and even though they have spent gazillions building many more miles of highways, the congestion has only gotten worse. There are, simply, too many people in the area, and they all believe that driving is a birthright. So the asphalt is covered with cars, often stalled, some traveling at 90 mph, sometimes at the same time. Remarkably, there is very little honking of horns or firing of weapons.
Which suggests that a level of acceptance has set in, probably an unhealthy state. I can’t imagine that people who put themselves through such a horror of congestion, noise, fumes, and frustration can conduct themselves in a healthy manner in their personal or professional lives, even under LA’s definitions. And it’s impossible to imagine that anyone of them sit home, read the newspaper, and give serious thought to their citizenship obligations.
Stuck in the mechanical mire last night, I thought LaLa was probably a justification for WMDs, that if Saddam needed a place to wipe out, bang-zoom, this was it. Then we arrived at Denise’s house, and I spent an hour with Jonah, her 4½ year old, who is smarter than most of Redding and is already more engaging than most people you’ll ever meet. Very polite, too.
So hold off on the nukes, until we can get our family and friends, and Tom Hanks and some of the other good people in the entertainment industry outta town. It would also be nice if the Getty Museum and some other irreplaceable items could be protected. In the meantime, make sure there’s enough Johnny Walker Black for medicinal purposes and a Merry Christmas.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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